“It is said that whenever you call on the Triple Goddess, she comes to you...when I wandered lost in the Nether Realm, she, who led me back to the material world, we call you, Hecate. We call on you now: Maiden, in your unbounded potential. We call on you: Mother, in all your divine power. We call on you: Crone, in your arcane wisdom...We call on ourselves…”


As I struggle to write in the middle of the night, with creativity as alien to me as the outside world, let me tell you a story -that which I construct through the understanding and knowledge of other stories, that I have heard, and you have heard, let’s attempt a thread which my multiple consciousnesses join.


Lifeline: Element of Water

This journey begins sometime back in 2010, when I watched James Cameron’s Avatar for the first time. Up until a day or two back, when I rewatched it, all I could recall of Avatar was its colours -primarily blues and purples and hues of an underwater existence. I am not too sure if that is James Cameron’s fascination with the neptunal colours, or my eyes stuck there. It was almost like what my professor of Modernism would call an Impression (subliminal of the 20th century art movement -Impressionism). Avatar is the story of Pandora, which Hollywood constructed to be a planet supremely rich in resources and minerals set in the future, and of course, what do we do when we find a place rich in something? Diamond/indigo/spices/human populace or otherwise? *Cue Amitabh Bacchan from KBC saying, “Bilkul Sahi Jawab”: WE COLONISE! (Because my universe, my choice!) The same way, this group of educated scientists and military people constructed warships at a place which is called Pandora (a name literally ousted from mythology), let alone it being all blue and purple and pretty and lifelike and everything symbolising vitality! They believed, like every other pseudo-intellectual, that using heavy linguistics (no offense to Shashi Tharoor) and jargon like “UNOBTANIUM” would give them this superiority over something which oozes off just one word: nature. The entire planet depicted is filled with dense forests: the Na’vi people literally tie themselves to the forest with their hair endings to the aerial roots of the trees.

The film passes through visuals of the protagonist, Jake, a paraplegic, once in his Na’vi humanoid crushing the soil between his toes to feel the vitality of the forests and he becomes bluer than his pale self, to befriending this gigantic bird-like creature the ikran and flying through the dense azurish forests, to him finally connecting to the forest when he allows his hair endings to join to the aerial roots of the Tree of Souls: symbolising a literal and anatomical connect with the forest. The entire film is a constant reminder of the element of water with its shades of blue, purple, greens, and the cold colour spectrum, making the visuals highly vital, serene, and most importantly that of wisdom. These visuals are interrupted only during the war scene, where you get a feel of Earth in Pandora -thus, nature completely stripped and raped of its vitality using the highly masculine war machines, which is later restored by the tribe coming together to the Tree of Souls and establishing a mutual respect and a connect which is not just financial, political, or social -because these are human terms, highly synthetic. The element of water is forgiving and motherly. Their connection is soulful, vital and organic based on something that humbles you, and well, let’s just say, humans are not the humblest of creatures.


Lifeline: Element of Fire

A film despite giving many of us life-lessons is certainly not capable of changing an entire race of not-so humble creatures (or not yet). Let’s then jump to the 2020 feature, Anvita Dutt’s Bulbbul. One word to describe this film: Red. This film is so red, pink, and orange, that if Avatar was Neptunal, this opposite spectrum was Venus, in colour and in spirit. The moon is blood-moon, the forest perhaps had a higher haemoglobin level than most of us -and yet, just like Pandora (the goddess) was raped. The protagonist Bulbbul is the forest personified as well as called the witch (hunt any innocent girl down, then go, hey, how are you not easy? Then rape them, and if that doesn’t work out, let’s burn them! Easy-Peasy!) Yet, this goddess-turned-witch, adorns the power of Abanindranath Tagore and Raja Ravi Verma paintings, she answers back: and this film, the forest, and the forest witch -Bulbbul, does not reconcile, nor forgives, it is not life-giving, it is wrath, and thus, purgatory. It purifies the land from the evil, and despite the good-man trying to kill her by burning it down, does not burn the spirit of the forest: it comes back like a fury surrounded by Dante-Yeatsian fire petals. Bulbbul rejuvenates the forest like the Calcuttan storm it was by spilling blood of the evil, purging everything else with an amalgamation of Midas’ golden touch and Jesus’ crimson blood. This element of fire is of the Maiden of unbounded potential.


Lifeline: Element of Air

Beyond the heat, the consciousness shall then attempt an epic turn, to cool itself down and find itself struggling to return from the dead -but its cold as dead: Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2016 release, The Revenant (which, by the way, means back from the dead). Again, just like Bulbbul, this film can be categorised by its white. You can feel Casper eering around, it is so white! This time the not-so humble creature learns to fear the forest. The forest which is pale, deadening, scary, and reminiscence of death. It can call you to death any time. It pulls you to the hospital -it is old, ancient, with grey pine hair. The forest is primitive, sans technology and humans, animals ruling and attacking. The only way you can sustain is if you learn to respect it. It is ice-like, like the god of death, and the planet: Pluto. The protagonist quite literally reaches out for the air by retreating to the mountains in the end: and ultimately using the now arcane wisdom that lies in the forest, amidst the scares of the gigantic Grizzly, which is humbling to the human. This element of air, the white forest, is beyond your ideas of material existence, greed, politics, and everything human. It has lived his life. It is almost eternal. It is the wisdom and the ancient of the Crone.


Lifeline: Element of Earth


I am not trying to make a statement here. Yet, I am that someone who struggles to understand her environment, her people, more importantly, herself. I do not exist in Pandora, but I do believe there exists a Tree of Soul, and we are way too distracted with cutting down the woods to create bullet trains when we can find it in us to ride the ikran, and witness the sheer gorgeousness of that vital blue Pandora. I might not be a goddess or even a witch, but I have seen the blood moon, and the forests do answer back: if not as the fire of Bulbbul, definitely as the storm of Bulbul. I never died (okay, maybe a little everyday), but I do believe there exists a wisdom which is beyond me, which knows more than me, and you, and all of us -something which binds us together beyond the commercial ideas of power and hegemony and capitalism and fanaticism; and as long as the circle of mutual respect, compassion, and kindness isn’t established, with our natural groundings centred, we are all going to be lost, in the Nether Realm. Let’s begin a journey, let’s feel the earth between our toes, let’s call on ourselves.